Not at Any Price

There are many reasons why banking should be boring. The most important reasons can be complicated, such as the simple fact that fancy new financial instruments actually increase instability in the entire system, or very simple, such as the need for a certain level of democracy and thus understanding in basic financial systems. But there’s one more reason that banks need to stick with the boring process of borrowing or accepting deposits at one rate and loaning at another, making money on the “spread” between them: they don’t know how to do anything else.

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